Hans Severus Ziegler (13 October 1893 – 1 May 1978) was a German publicist, intendant, teacher and Nazi Party official. A leading cultural director under the Nazis, he was closely associated with the censorship and cultural co-ordination of the Third Reich.

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Early years

Ziegler was born on 13 October 1893 in Eisenach. He was the son of a banker and, through his mother, the grandson of Gustav Schirmer. His grandmother, the American-born Mary Francis Schirmer, was a close friend of Cosima Wagner and from an early age Ziegler was attracted to the militant nationalism in which the Wagner family were steeped.[1] Ziegler studied German literature at university, completing his education to doctoral standard.[2] He became a journalist, writing mostly for extreme right organs such as the Deutsche Wochen-Zeitung.[3]

Under the Nazis

In 1933 Ziegler was appointed to the Council of State and as a member of the State Government of Thuringia. In addition, he served as President of the Deutsche Schillerstiftung and Reich culture Senator.[9] In 1936, he was appointed the General Manager of the Deutsches Nationaltheater and Staatskapelle Weimar and State Commissioner for the State Theatre in Thuringia.[9] In 1935 he was placed on leave whilst he was investigated for alleged breaches of Paragraph 175, the anti-homosexual legislation, although the case was dropped.[9]

Ziegler played a leading role in promoting the Nazi vision of culture, particularly with regards to "degenerate" music. He was a strong critic of atonality, dismissing it as decadent "cultural Bolshevism".[10] He curated the Entartete Musik exhibition in Düsseldorf, with Karol Rathaus and Wilhelm Grosz amongst those receiving the strongest condemnation in the pamphlet he wrote to accompany the exhibition.[11] Whilst working under Frick, in Thuringia, Ziegler had also overseen the removal of modern art pieces from museums and public buildings, and helped to bring about a crackdown on the "glorification of Negroidism" by restricting the performance of jazz music.[12] Promulgated in his 1930 edict Against Negro Culture, the Thuringian foreshadowed the co-ordination of culture that was to happen under the Nazi government.[13]Entartete Musik would continue Ziegler's crusade against jazz,[14] whilst also condemning Ernst Krenek's opera Jonny spielt auf as the archetype of Weimar decadence and miscegenation.[15]

Post-war

In the Soviet occupation zone several of Ziegler's writings,[16] as well as a book about him,[17] were placed on the Liste der auszusondernden Literatur (list of banned literature).

After the war he worked as a representative for Gaststättenporzellan and subsequently as a private tutor in Essen.[4] He also directed a private theatre from 1952 to 1954.[4] Politically he was active in Deutsches Kulturwerk Europäischen Geistes, an extreme right study group established in 1950.[18] In this role, he became a regular guest of Winifred Wagner, who regularly hosted such other far-right luminaries as Adolf von Thadden, Edda Göring and Oswald Mosley.[19]